


As It Was

by shouldhavebeenpersephone



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Communication, F/F, Fluff, Future, Marriage Proposal, bit of a spoiler but, this is purely a comfort fic ngl
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-04
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-17 23:22:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29849070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shouldhavebeenpersephone/pseuds/shouldhavebeenpersephone
Summary: Beauregard has been rather distant lately and Yasha can't help but feel responsible. As she and Beau finally have a night just to themselves, a conversation opens with all the answers Yasha needed and more.aka they are both so scared to hurt each other that they can't figure out what to say but it works out in the endSet maybe a couple of years in the future, Beau and Yasha living on the M9 ship with Fjord and Jester and travelling the wide seas.
Relationships: Beauregard Lionett & Yasha, Beauregard Lionett/Yasha
Comments: 2
Kudos: 113





	As It Was

It had been a rather exhausting day.

First, there were these gigantic waves, then a pirate ship that attempted to attack them, closely followed by marine guards which required a conversation, then some course-planning before dinner and their arrival back in Nicodranas with all of the paperwork and administration that included.

Yasha and Beauregard had decided to stay on board while Fjord and Jester stayed at the Chateau with the Ruby to Yasha’s relief, she was looking forward to having some time to herself with Beauregard. As Yasha carried a tuckered out and half-asleep monk below-decks towards their bedroom, there was a sense of happiness that she got to do this again; Beauregard had been… preoccupied lately, it was odd. She felt like perhaps she had done something to set her off – it hadn’t happened in the last while but especially at the beginning of their relationship Beau tended to lock up when she felt things she thought she shouldn’t, communication wasn’t quite in her system yet. Whatever it was, Yasha would most likely have to wait it out, but she was getting impatient; this lasted far longer than most of these instances normally did.

There was a stack of notebooks Beau loosely held in her arms that would have fallen had they not had her lap to rest on, of which a couple failed to keep withstanding gravity as Yasha carefully placed Beau on the bed. With a soft smile and softer hands, Yasha took the notebooks still in Beauregard’s lap, placing them on the nightstand on Beau’s side of the bed, sitting on the edge of the bed and bending down to pick up the others.

As she leaned over, her eyes caught her own name in one of the notebooks that lay open on the wood and her heart fluttered. Immediately a sense of curiosity crept into her as well as a sense of shame, as if she was infringing on Beau’s privacy. While picking up the books, her curiosity took over and she couldn’t help but take a look at the page that lay open in front of her. Perhaps she was looking for some answers, some clue as to what it could be that had set Beau off like this.

Reading the writings, Yasha didn’t quite know what she had expected but it wasn’t… this.

This specific page held scrabbles and notes about the basic workings of her old tribe with a couple of tribe names at the top followed by question marks, one of which was the Dolorav tribe. It was a bit overwhelming to be confronted with this out of the blue and Yasha found herself flipping pages, scanning through the rest of the notes. She saw that Beau had indeed figured out which tribe had been hers, had found out that the leadership of her tribe had been murdered roughly two years ago at the time of writing and was questioning whether Yasha could have been part of this massacre, none of her theories finalized since she didn’t have a frame of when exactly Yasha had left her tribe, but guessing that it probably could not have been Yasha since Mollymauk had known her for roughly two years. There were lists about the build of her tribe, their folklore, the roles of members and acceptance rituals and much more recent notes of seemingly a rather extensive research on marriage and everything that came with it within her tribe. That was… interesting.

She felt Beau shift on the bed behind her and a mumble mixed with a groan asked, “What’s taking you so long?” As the monk sat up, rubbing her eyes, she noticed the notebook in Yasha’s hands.

“What’s that?”

“Oh, I uhm-” Yasha quickly closed the notebook, putting it away along with the rest of them, “I’m sorry, it fell and opened and I peeked.”

“That’s okay, which one is it?” Beau grabbed at it sleepily, sitting up now and opening the notebook as Yasha nervously watched.

“I didn’t mean to intrude, I just saw my name and…” she sighed deeply, “I’m sorry, I feel I’ve crossed a boundary of sorts.”

Beauregard recognized the contents, a soft orange hue making its way onto her face, her hand finding the edge of her undercut to rub between two fingers. “Yeah, no, that’s- that’s okay.” She was awake immediately, her mind racing through what Yasha might possibly think about all of this. Would she think it was creepy? Would she be hurt by it? Should she not have prodded into Yasha’s past? She noticed she had been staring and quiet for a while and felt herself panic even more.

Yasha turned towards her, bringing one leg up onto the bed to face Beau properly, the smaller woman refusing to meet her gaze.

“Is something wrong, Beauregard?”

Finally, she caught a glimpse of Beau’s blue eyes before they disappeared again under furrowed brows, “Not really,” followed by a shaky shrug.

“Not really is not a no though?” Yasha placed a hand on one of Beau’s, “Are you sure you are okay with me having seen that? I mean, I really shouldn’t have, I’m-”

“It’s okay,” another brief meeting of eyes, as Beau cut her off, “Really, I don’t mind.”

Yasha sat up straighter, her hand now leaving that of Beau. She watched her partner put the notebook away once more, moving to lay back down, her back turned towards her as her face met the pillow. She couldn’t take this anymore, she had to know. Yasha spoke again before she could hold herself back.

“Something is wrong Beau, and if it isn’t this then it’s something else.” A pale hand reached over, almost touching the monk’s back that was facing her, pausing briefly. “Please tell me what I did.”

At this, Beauregard’s head snapped over to Yasha, “What do you mean?” Did Yasha think she was at fault here? While it was Beau who was incapable of communication and decision making, so much so that she had somehow managed to isolate herself from the one person she could never possibly have enough of?

“I mean that… I don’t know, you have been very far away lately. I can’t figure out what I did wrong.” Yasha had now opened a conversation she could not back out of.

“Yasha…” Now, Beauregard’s eyes seemed almost glued to Yasha, the barbarian suddenly feeling a bit exposed. She sat up to meet Yasha where she was seated, hands planting themselves on Yasha’s knee, “You did absolutely nothing wrong, I promise.” Fuck, Beau had really fucked things up.

“Then what is it?” There was a look on Yasha’s face she hadn’t seen in a long time. She looked so… Fragile, when she was upset, “Did you think I would be mad about you researching my tribe? I don’t understand.”

“No, I…” Beauregard took a deep breath to steady herself, staring down at her hands on Yasha’s leg. As good as she had gotten at sharing with and talking to Yasha over the last few years, there was always an edge to it, always that lingering fear and ‘what if’. She picked up her doubts and put them away neatly in a corner of her brain; Yasha deserved more than this.

“I started researching a bit about your tribe when you left us. After Molly,” she hesitantly looked up to meet mismatched eyes, “I wanted to help you, in some way. I didn’t know then about your wife, and when I did find out, I was hesitant but… I don’t know, I just wanted to be able to do something.”

Beauregard’s eyes dropped back down to her own hands, one picking at the other, both now returned into her own lap. Her heart was racing, “I felt helpless when you were gone and it got worse when Oban took you. I, uhm…” another quick glance, “I did most of the research when you were gone with him. I guess it was some way to feel less useless, to feel less like we abandoned you.”

It felt almost like something clicking into place in Yasha’s head. That made an excruciating amount of sense. Beau had always had problems with feeling worthless when she felt she didn’t have any use, so this must have been a way to cope. Yasha couldn’t help but feel sympathy and fall the slightest bit more in love with Beau at the thought of her poring over books just for her. There was a moment of silence that felt like it lasted forever for Beauregard and as she looked up, finally collecting enough courage to look Yasha in the face, she was met with a heart-melting smile.

A breath she hadn’t noticed she was holding escaped from her lips with a brief shudder as her eyes closed and her hands went searching for Yasha’s. Taking one of her large warm hands into her own, Beau’s lifted it and put her face into it, allowing herself to put some weight into Yasha’s support.

Yasha tucked a strand of hair behind Beau’s ear with her free hand, “Oh Beau,” pausing briefly to kiss her partner’s forehead, “That is... I would say it’s one of the kindest things anyone has ever thought to do for me, but most things you do are.”

This earned a soft and fragile chuckle from Beauregard as she looked up, pushing her face into Yasha’s open palm even more.

As Yasha’s thumb traced the shape of Beauregard’s brow, there was still that tightness in her chest. This did not explain why Beauregard had been as distant as she had. In a brief moment, using this new information, Yasha scrolled through all of her theories on what she could possibly have done for Beauregard to pull away like this. She felt like her intelligence was betraying her; she was not smart enough for this, she wasn’t smart enough for most things that were more than a little complicated. It was a bit frustrating, especially being with someone as sharp as Beau – she felt she wasn’t enough sometimes. Perhaps that was it.

Beau’s voice pulled her out of her head, “What are you thinking about?”

“Uhm,” Yasha briefly shook her head, as if to shake the thoughts out of it; should she take this opportunity to get out of this conversation or should she keep going? She decided she could not handle not knowing, “I was just thinking. I mean, this doesn’t really explain why you’ve been so distant lately.”

Beauregard sighed deeply. Again, Yasha deserved better than this. Whether it would upset her more or not, she had a right to know what all of this had been about. “Right,” she mumbled to herself and started to thumb through her larger pouches.

As Yasha watched her with confusion in her eyes, Beau pulled out a necklace made of bones, perfectly clean and delicately hand carved with embedded bits of metal on a string made of leather.

Yasha recognized it immediately; so this was why there was such an extensive section on marriage rituals. For someone who wasn’t a part of the Dolorav tribe and only knew their habits through research, this was a very impressive proposal necklace. There were delicate vines and flowers carved into the bones that looked to be the teeth and fingers of some creature, with lightning-shaped silver embeds on the lighter, shinier bones and golden rights around the dull, darker ones. It was absolutely beautiful. She felt her eyes water as her vision blurred a bit, Beau taking in a sharp breath.

“I know it’s not the best, and I don’t even know if you are interested – I don’t mean to be disrespectful to Zuala, and technically I didn’t kill this by myself, but-”

“Beauregard.”

As Beau took a gasp-like breath rather than continuing her ramble, Yasha took her face into both of her large calloused hands, kissing her quickly before letting go, wiping a single tear away and putting a hand into one of her pockets, pulling out a simple white-gold ring holding a bright polished square-cut labradorite, white-gold vines encasing it.

“I have had this for 2 months,” Yasha half sobbed, half chuckled, “In my pocket, everywhere we went. I was waiting for the right moment.”

Beauregard, her eyes now also tear-filled, returned her chuckle, “I started making this 3 months ago. It’s been finished for a while now.”

“Is that why you were so distant?”

“I was scared to overstep. I mean, I know that marriage in your tribe is forever and I thought maybe that that was something that would always be reserved for Zuala and I didn’t want to offend you so I just… I just.” Beauregard wiped a tear off her face as well, her shoulders hunched as she looked back up to Yasha from the ring in her hands. “I should have just asked, huh?”

“Yeah, probably.”

The two of them sat there, first softly chuckling, both holding a means of proposal, then softly crying, holding each other for a brief moment. In their embrace, Beauregard suddenly remembered the necklace in her hands, reluctantly pulling away from Yasha.

“So…” a smile and a sniffle, “Yasha Nydoorin. The time that I have been with you has been the best of my life. I honestly never thought I would ever find someone who would be able to stick with me for more than a month, let alone many, many, many fucking months. You have somehow made me feel loved and worthy of it, made me feel safe and comfortable in seeking it, made me feel whole as I am without having to look for the finishing touches outside of myself.”

Here Beau found herself having to pause briefly to keep from crying, Yasha’s hands making their way to her shoulders and neck as if to brace herself, her eyes trained on Beau and face wet and salty.

“I have loved you for a while now, and honestly, it just gets more day by day. If you would let me, I would love nothing more than to spend the rest of my days loving you more and more until my heart can’t anymore.”

A soft sob escaped from Yasha as their foreheads met, soon after which their lips collided sloppily, both of them snotty and a bit hazy.

Yasha took a few deep breaths to compose herself. “Beau.” Her voice broke on the single word and she repeated, this time in celestial, “ _Beauregard_.”

Beau’s heart did a couple of somersaults as if it hadn’t been jumping already at the sound of her name in Yasha’s native tongue; it sounded so beautiful, almost like a song – there was an emotionality to celestial that was not translatable, that could not come across in any other language.

Yasha continued, now in common. “I have been lucky enough to know love before, with Zuala and with Mollymauk. Zuala used to tell me that soulmates are made, not found, and she was right.” Her fingers traced Beau’s jawline as she spoke, “I have been lucky enough to make multiple across my short time on this plane. I am incredibly proud of you and of us for where we are and for the life we have built. You have made me happier than I ever thought was possible.” As she took a deep breath and held up the white-gold ring, she switched back to celestial, “ _Will you marry me?_ ”

Beauregard wrapped her arms around Yasha’s neck, the bone necklace still in hand, and pulled her into another sloppy and wet kiss, muttering against her lips “Fuck yes,” as she pulled her down onto the bed.

They held each other and made out and cried for what felt like forever as well as mere seconds before pulling away again. Yasha felt weightless as Beauregard put the handmade necklace around her neck and somehow even more so as she put her ring on Beau’s finger.

They decided to go for a late flight together that night and soon after found themselves in bed, clothes scattered across the floor and the whole ship to themselves. Yasha drifted off to sleep with the weight lifted off her chest and more content than she ever remembered being.

It had been a rather exciting day.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was inspired by the following Tumblr posts;  
> https://flurry-of-beaus-pop-pop.tumblr.com/post/644676520321925120/imagine-beau-making-the-decision-to-propose-to  
> https://flurry-of-beaus-pop-pop.tumblr.com/post/644669134246903808/imagine-beau-not-only-taking-notes-about-little
> 
> This was honestly just self-indulgence, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did :)


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